Phil Spencer tweeted yesterday saying that this was the largest launch in Xbox history in terms of consoles sold: That's really interesting to me, because the general opinion on the internet...
Thank you for supporting the largest launch in Xbox history. In 24 hrs more new consoles sold, in more countries, than ever before. We’re working with retail to resupply as quickly as possible. You continue to show us the connective power of play is more important than ever.
That's really interesting to me, because the general opinion on the internet towards the new Xboxes is fairly negative. Obviously doesn't matter to the actual customers.
That's actually not a hard metric. First Xbox had some initial hype, but also a lot of skeptical buyers because of Microsoft's crap history with video game platforms. It hit 1 million after 3...
In 24 hrs more new consoles sold, in more countries, than ever before.
That's actually not a hard metric.
First Xbox had some initial hype, but also a lot of skeptical buyers because of Microsoft's crap history with video game platforms. It hit 1 million after 3 weeks. But then it kinda ended up ~Gamecube levels... both flops relative to the PS2 (admittedly the most popular game console of all time).
Xbox 360 was their most successful by far, but they massively screwed up by not manufacturing enough for launch and they only had about ~400k sold a month after launch, and 10% were immediately re-sold on ebay for insane markups.
Xbox One was an utter disaster. Their E3 reception was horrid, in part because of a lot of anti-features. Less than a month later, the president responsible for the Xbox One development 'departed' to become CEO of Zynga. You know...the company that just fired 18% of it's workforce a month ago, and by end of July had lost over 1/2 of its userbase. Under his tenure, they laid off another 15% and he left < 1 year later. Here's some of the biggest problems with the Xbox One launch:
They tried to kill physical game resale, all games tied to Live account, even physical discs. Yea, Steam had been doing it awhile, but game resale was a major feature of consoles.
The family sharing (the feature to mitigate that) wasn't ready at launch and think it never got implemented
Always-on internet connection, losing access to games after 24 hours offline.
They only launched in 13 markets because of numerous other problems (down from 21).
The forced inclusion of Kinect, driving up initial sale cost. Turns out, even if it wasn't plugged in, 10% of the GPU resources were dedicated to the Kinect, changed in 2014.
Even then, they sold 1 million units at launch. But still ended up ~50 million as of now, relative to the PS4's 150+ million
So yea. After two horridly botched launches (First one wasn't really their fault, struggles of new entrant), they finally got one right. And I'm sure launching in over double the markets helped. Supposedly... They decided to stop releasing official sales numbers after October 2015. Wonder why.
Some solutions: Have a USB-based transfer solution like my Pixel phone has to migrate prior console data Pre-load the launch titles, letting users update or remove during setup BitTorrent based...
Some solutions:
Have a USB-based transfer solution like my Pixel phone has to migrate prior console data
Pre-load the launch titles, letting users update or remove during setup
BitTorrent based downloads, perhaps with discount credit applied for continual seeding.
Although that last one would likely be opt-out in a hidden menu named poorly without any credits if recent Microsoft is to be judged.
Does it necessarily need solving? I read it as an overall positive: "we had a peak that we likely won't significantly exceed in the next ~5 years, and the network handled it well". The...
Does it necessarily need solving? I read it as an overall positive: "we had a peak that we likely won't significantly exceed in the next ~5 years, and the network handled it well". The sysadmin-adjacent part of my mind calls that a good day!
I suppose, but it's a peak that didn't need to happen. It's going to be a bigger concern going forward. Games aren't getting any smaller. As a semi-related sidebar, companies shouldn't complain...
I suppose, but it's a peak that didn't need to happen. It's going to be a bigger concern going forward. Games aren't getting any smaller.
As a semi-related sidebar, companies shouldn't complain about distribution costs if they're not exploring P2P or sneaker net options.
Couldn't Microsoft use a system like what they do for Windows updates-- allow updates from other devices on the network, and an opt-in for being able to share/pull them from other Windows PCs...
Couldn't Microsoft use a system like what they do for Windows updates-- allow updates from other devices on the network, and an opt-in for being able to share/pull them from other Windows PCs online? To be fair, I don't know if that is just a modified BitTorrent-based system to begin with, but MS has existing infrastructure to enable shared game and update downloads.
To be fair, they already do better with game update distribution vs Sony (I didn't know until a few days ago when my roommate told me that game updates on his PS4 are full downloads, not delta updates), but that's an issue I'm surprised wasn't solved back in the 360 or current XB1 days.
Couldn't BitTorrent make it even worse from the ISP perspective (which is what this article is about), since then their users would be both downloading and uploading heavily during peaks like...
Couldn't BitTorrent make it even worse from the ISP perspective (which is what this article is about), since then their users would be both downloading and uploading heavily during peaks like this? It would make it easier on the centralized source (Microsoft in this case), but I don't know if it would help the ISPs much.
I guess having a lot of the data already available inside their own network would probably help so that it doesn't have to all come from the central source, but I think having some caching servers could do that too (and I believe some ISPs already do this with Steam downloads).
Both of these are true. Not having to cross ISP boundries will help tremendously, and P2P can basically function as a distributed cache in that regard. Also why I advocated for a preload of launch...
I guess having a lot of the data already available inside their own network would probably help so that it doesn't have to all come from the central source, but I think having some caching servers could do that too (and I believe some ISPs already do this with Steam downloads).
Both of these are true. Not having to cross ISP boundries will help tremendously, and P2P can basically function as a distributed cache in that regard.
Also why I advocated for a preload of launch titles and/or offline transfer as well.
I don't know if Microsoft do this but a significant amount of people hefting stuff from internet to home users often employ services like Akamai's vast "edge" CDN, which is basically a distributed...
P2P can basically function as a distributed cache in that regard.
I don't know if Microsoft do this but a significant amount of people hefting stuff from internet to home users often employ services like Akamai's vast "edge" CDN, which is basically a distributed caching system, albeit one with rather better connectivity than end users generally have.
P2P is great for some things but there is a reason it never really took off for large scale distribution, because as @Deimos suggests, it does tend to choke the last mile, and you have to rely on people seeding. I'd bet money on ISPs much preferring not having their upstream hammered as well as down.
Having a few thousand servers in well-connected data centres around the world might not be as fast for every end user but it's a predictable and manageable system and that's usually preferable. All the connectivity 'down' to the ISPs from the big DCs is fast and has plenty of capacity so loading that is not much of a concern.
Phil Spencer tweeted yesterday saying that this was the largest launch in Xbox history in terms of consoles sold:
That's really interesting to me, because the general opinion on the internet towards the new Xboxes is fairly negative. Obviously doesn't matter to the actual customers.
That's actually not a hard metric.
Even then, they sold 1 million units at launch. But still ended up ~50 million as of now, relative to the PS4's 150+ million
So yea. After two horridly botched launches (First one wasn't really their fault, struggles of new entrant), they finally got one right. And I'm sure launching in over double the markets helped. Supposedly... They decided to stop releasing official sales numbers after October 2015. Wonder why.
Some solutions:
Although that last one would likely be opt-out in a hidden menu named poorly without any credits if recent Microsoft is to be judged.
Does it necessarily need solving? I read it as an overall positive: "we had a peak that we likely won't significantly exceed in the next ~5 years, and the network handled it well". The sysadmin-adjacent part of my mind calls that a good day!
I suppose, but it's a peak that didn't need to happen. It's going to be a bigger concern going forward. Games aren't getting any smaller.
As a semi-related sidebar, companies shouldn't complain about distribution costs if they're not exploring P2P or sneaker net options.
Couldn't Microsoft use a system like what they do for Windows updates-- allow updates from other devices on the network, and an opt-in for being able to share/pull them from other Windows PCs online? To be fair, I don't know if that is just a modified BitTorrent-based system to begin with, but MS has existing infrastructure to enable shared game and update downloads.
To be fair, they already do better with game update distribution vs Sony (I didn't know until a few days ago when my roommate told me that game updates on his PS4 are full downloads, not delta updates), but that's an issue I'm surprised wasn't solved back in the 360 or current XB1 days.
The Windows Update settings are opt-out, not opt-in, and a hassle to find. Hence my last line there.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/2955491/how-to-stop-windows-10-from-using-your-pcs-bandwidth-to-update-strangers-systems.html
This stuff is a perfect use case for BitTorrent. But, it should be opt-in only, with a second opt-in to continue seeding.
Bet fewer people would opt in unless there was an incentive. Especially if you're on a metered service.
Couldn't BitTorrent make it even worse from the ISP perspective (which is what this article is about), since then their users would be both downloading and uploading heavily during peaks like this? It would make it easier on the centralized source (Microsoft in this case), but I don't know if it would help the ISPs much.
I guess having a lot of the data already available inside their own network would probably help so that it doesn't have to all come from the central source, but I think having some caching servers could do that too (and I believe some ISPs already do this with Steam downloads).
Both of these are true. Not having to cross ISP boundries will help tremendously, and P2P can basically function as a distributed cache in that regard.
Also why I advocated for a preload of launch titles and/or offline transfer as well.
I don't know if Microsoft do this but a significant amount of people hefting stuff from internet to home users often employ services like Akamai's vast "edge" CDN, which is basically a distributed caching system, albeit one with rather better connectivity than end users generally have.
P2P is great for some things but there is a reason it never really took off for large scale distribution, because as @Deimos suggests, it does tend to choke the last mile, and you have to rely on people seeding. I'd bet money on ISPs much preferring not having their upstream hammered as well as down.
Having a few thousand servers in well-connected data centres around the world might not be as fast for every end user but it's a predictable and manageable system and that's usually preferable. All the connectivity 'down' to the ISPs from the big DCs is fast and has plenty of capacity so loading that is not much of a concern.